U.S. Policy in Vietnam & in Central America

This paper deals with: (i) the causes of the war between the

United States and the Vietnamese communists; (ii) the outcome of

that war and its consequences; (iii) whether the U. S. was justi-

fied in fighting that war; and (iv) similarities and differences

in the conduct of U. S. military and foreign policy in Vietnam

(1960-1965) and in Central America during the 1980s.

The three principal causes of the war between the United

States and the Vietnamese communists were: (a) the implacable

determination and perserverance of North Vietnam and the Viet

Cong in the South to achieve the forcible unification of Vietnam

under their rule; (b) the conviction of the U.S. government from

1950 áuntil the early 1970s that U. S. vital áinterests árequired

that a communist takeover of South Vietnam be resisted and its

willingness to make a major commitment of its arms and resources

to attain that objective; and (c) political instability in South

South Vietnam, the government of which could not, after 1964,

preserve its independence without massive American involvement.

"Vietnamese history is a continuing story of resisting

invasion mostly by armies from China" (Morrison 4). Vietnamese

nationalism has been fueled for centuries by its generally un-

successful insurrections against foreign rule. Vietnam had final-

. . .
ed ástrained áin ápart because of the MIA issue.  ää  Vietnam has had serious economic problems During the past 20 years: "Vietnam, with one of the lowest ...GNP's in the world, still wages a grim struggle for subsistence." (Sutter 71) Vietnam suffered millions of civilian and military casualties during the war. In the South 9,000 out of 15,000 hamlets, 25 million acres of farmland, 12 million acres of forest and 1.5 million farm animals were destroyed. There were 879,000 orphans, 181,000 disabled and 1 million war widows. (Young 302) The Vietnamese people were the real losers. Since 1975, more than 1 million of them, including ethnic Chinese threatened with Vietnamese xenophobia, the boat people and political refugees have fled the country. "...the majority opinion is that intolera- le conditions, political and economic, forced people to leave."  P
8 a4
 è(Sutter 63). Some Western predictions of a massive blood bath may have been excessive, but 65,000 people were executed for politi- cal reasons between 1975 and 1983. (Sutter 63) Another 500,000 were held in re-education camps, Vietnam's Gulag, most of whom remained incarc
. . .

Some common words found in the essay are:
Involvement War, Soviet Union, North Vietnam, War Americanization, Chi Minh, China Morrison, Singapore American, Vietnam's Gulag, French Diem, El Salvador, a4
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8, p
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, north vietnam, american involvement, york random house, york random, war american, vietnamese communists, central america, sutter 71, ì  p
8, north vietnam won,
Approximate Word count = 2591
Approximate Pages = 10 (250 words per page)

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